What use to be the PPA that allowed Ubuntu users to use native .deb packages for Firefox has recently changed to the same meta package that forces installation of Snap and the Firefox snap package.
I am having to remove the meta package, then re-uninstall the snap firefox, then re-uninstall Snap, then install pin the latest build I could get (firefox_116.0.3+build2-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~mt1_arm64.deb) to keep the native firefox build.
I’m so done with Ubuntu.
Yeah they’re all in on snaps. Vote with your distro choice.
I’m afraid they’ll break off Debian one day. Supporting snap is one thing, sabotaging well established user cases (apt installing deb, not being a snap prozy) is another.
On my corporate laptop, because they require ubuntu to… well spy on us, I wrote a interface in front of snap to works like flatpak… as snap forcing through on everything I work on…
At least I tried to disable it. and failed, so I wrote a piece of junk code to accomodate my flatpak muscle memory
What I don’t get is why. What with the recent Red Hat debacle one would think Canonical would make a stronger case as opposed to force feeding the issue.
Because it’s canonical’s thing they’re marketing to server markets
haha… ubuntu on enterprise doesn’t even touch 5% of the market, where 90% of it is RHEL and 5% another is Windows Server and some OSX… so… I don’t think canonical is dumb enough
*please read, enterprise market, not hobbyist. Hobbyist doesn’t make money for ubuntu. Well if the hobbyist is a decision maker in enterprise, they probably will have effect, but the problem is, most of them opt in RHEL/Clones
You got any data to back that up?
You can look into fortune 500 report on Server stack, and self published red hat report. Red Hat claims is higher, but I will say, it should be at max 90%, not 95% as Red Hat Claims.
https://www.redhat.com/en/about/company
Seems they revise it. hem… the fly-er I got for Red Hat academy promotion written is 95% in 2019… strange…
But anyway, you can see anywhere, on any business medium high, mostly use Linux.
Azure, 100% backed by Red Hat in their Infra, even Microsoft doesn’t deny or agree with it. AWS 100% EL based (old times RHEL, nowdays Fedora), Linode, Scaleway, Contabo, Hetzner, BiznetGio, Aliyun (even their Aliyun/Alibaba Linux is RHEL), OVH, etc. so I will say it’s high enough… that almost entire infrastructure rely on Red Hat Engineering. At least if Red Hat gone, CentOS Stream code still there, Fedora Code still there. The community can continue to develop it.
Ubuntu only popular and first class only on Digital Ocean. No other cloud providers make ubuntu first class other than DO. Sure enough Ubuntu/Debian is there, you can install it, but, it’s not entirely first class as RHEL/Clones
Hate it or love it. Red Hat still the king of mission critical system except in Europe, where SUSE is leading, but SUSE itself is well… have same or near identical to Red Hat… so… welp… kind like in same EL boat.
Some will say data like this https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/stats/linux-statistics.html#The_Most_Popular_Linux_Distribution is more re presentable for general mass, but I don’t think it’s for enterprises…
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Mint is great. Definitely one of the best distros around. PopOS I’d wait for their new DE. Though with Ubuntu going balls deep on snaps, all those ubuntu based distros hang in the balance. At least Mint got a Debian edition already and they are working on a new version right now. Or just use straight up Debian with flatpaks, which is what I do.
Mint also does not force either
dpkg/apt-get/aptnorflatpak.
Even its GUI installer is a GUI wrapper arounddpkgandflatpak, every application available on both shows a drop-down allowing you to choose between the two.
You can also change its config to allow other sources, in case you want to add something else like snap.
The Pop_Shop gives you the option via a little drop down of flatpak/Deb. I’m not sure if the option is flagged by application developers or system76.
Imagine having to fight your OS to do what you want. True Windows experience.
Yes exactly. This is the main problem. It’s one thing to offer Snaps as an alternative, but to force them on users is not the Libre/FOSS way at all.
I switched away to Mint and I’m very glad I did. I’m in control and it works perfectly. Fantastic distro. No Snaps BS and it uses less RAM and is faster than Ubuntu.
I would encourage all Ubuntu users to switch to Mint. You won’t regret it.
It’s no wonder Canonical is partnering up with Microsoft to EEE Linux
You know what, enough is enough. Snaps run like shit in my system (IDK/DC why), I hate companies forcing their shit down my throat, and I was planning a clean reinstall anyway from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04. Might as well use the opportunity to go back to Debian. Or Mint. Or Mint Debian Edition. Who knows.
Next on the news, Ubuntu (“humanity”) gets renamed to Amasimba (“shit”). /s
Feeling bold? Try MenuetOS, it even claims to have an http client.
TempleOS and give it a try. The prophet Terry will be smilling from the Heaven TempleOS
I toyed with the idea of gentoo. Not because I want a rolling distro, but because of that 4chan meme.
Gentoo is very good actually, specially if you have a modern CPU.
I tried it on my desktop, and I never want anything else.
Redistribution, reverse engineering, disassembly or decompilation prohibited without permission from the copyright holders.
no
MX23, even no systemd
This is the way.
I don’t even mind systemd to be honest. My bone to pick against Poettering is because of pulseaudio.
After using it since Lucid Lynx 10.04, I switched from Ubuntu to Mint last weekend. I’m lazy about distros these days, and I really didn’t want to switch, but Firefox instability was driving me nuts. The web browser must be reliable, IMO. It’s a fundamental requirement for a desktop OS, and this problem didn’t exist before snaps.
Why not slackware /s
There’s a simple reason why Mozilla/canonical does this and that is security fixes. Due to the difference in support cycles of Firefox and Ubuntu LTS versions fixes would have to be manually backported to the system Firefox version and newer versions won’t run due to library dependencies. Snap solves all of that.
Don’t get me wrong though, snap is still terrible, but other than flatpak or doing the work of backporting it’s the only option to get security fixes to Ubuntu
Previous to the switch to snaps, Ubuntu was providing the latest version of Firefox built for each supported Ubuntu release. I’m sure this was more work, but the older system library version issue was not a blocker.
Edit: in fact, Mozilla still provides an apt repo with Firefox deb packages built for each supported Ubuntu release.
But around the same time mozilla shortened the support cycles for their lts releases
and newer versions won’t run due to library dependencies.
Mozilla seem to be able to limit library dependencies in their builds: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/system-requirements/
But are they actually doing this? I am not seeing any changes: https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa still has the .deb packages
literally every other distribution can solve this problem but Ubuntu can’t?
I warned you guys. “It’s so easy, just do these three steps if you don’t like snaps” but then later they tighten the vise
Yeah. I switched away from Ubuntu for all this crap.
I moved to Fedora for my laptop & desktop, and Debian for my home server. I’m considering switching everything to Debian eventually, but there’s a couple dedicated repos that make using Fedora on my laptop much easier for now.
There are several high quality community run distributions which aren’t beholden to corporate tools.
If you don’t embrace snaps just don’t use Ubuntu.
Hence me now moving off of it.
I’m curious, what are you considering moving into?
EndeavourOS. It’s available for Arm64. Has firefox, has chromium, has vivaldi, and even has a widevine plugin builder in their AUR repo for the first two.
For UTM hypervisor, select the Arch for ARM from their gallery and install it. Then follow the instructions for Parallels to EndeavourOS it. Oh, expand the disk and filesystem first, though.
It’s quite a step back in time for an installation process, though. Even after getting it installed and setup for KDE Plasma, still need to install a lot of things:
- NetworkManager
- git base-devel
- man-pages man-db
- dnsutils
- LibreOffice Plus all the things one installs for customization on any Linux… preferred shell(s), if not bash, shell customizations and completions, various cli’s you’ll want or need, your favorite IDE, browsers, browser extensions, programming languages, ansible, terraform, helm, kubectl, podman and or docker, etc etc.
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LibreWolf is a Firefox fork with features removed which we don’t want (Telemetry, Pocket, …) and a few (privacy) features enabled (which can be deactivated if they’re too annoying). I didn’t had any issues with Firefox extensions as well.
I’m currently using it on Debian and it runs smoothly. Recent Ubuntu versions are also supported and you can install them via your package manager, see here.
I’ve recently distro hopped and the new distro came with Firefox preinstalled (had arch before but with xfs and wanted btrf snapshots).
Do you think its telemetry is so bad? I want to help Mozilla to some extent to keep them working on Firefox as I think Librewolf isn’t showing much usage or support for Firefox itself.
@hornedfiend @Seltsamsel That’s a good question and got me curious. I had a look at Telemetry collection and deletion from Mozilla. You can enter
about:telemetryin the address bar to see what Firefox is collecting (even if it is not being sent).You shouldbea able to turn off from settings. More options are present in the config. You can find github guides doing more hardening for sedurity and privacy.
Not sure about librewolf specifically but most of these firefox forks do these initial setups for you and maybeave a couple of addons preinstalled. You would still be using firefox. Beyond crash reports and some reduced usage metrics turning them off should hinder firefox much.
Hot take: PPAs suck and snaps/flatpaks are better.
With PPAs, inevitably some repo that hasn’t been updated since 2015 causes dependency conflicts and you have to sit there and troubleshoot, or pick between the software you need and actually having an OS that’s not EOL. With snaps, you can keep your decade old dependencies all bundled up and still upgrade your system even if the package maintainer has abandoned it.
The issue people have with snaps isn’t the containerization or the bundles, but the proprietary backend. There is no way to point the snaps at a different store other than the one canonical controls. Canonicals forcing snaps on people pisses a lot of people off because it’s a blatant power grab, an attempt to get people dependent on something they have control over in a microsoft-esque move. Flatpaks and docker don’t have that issue.
Hot take: it doesn’t feel nice to have a change forced.
It should be the personal preference of the user to decide whether to use native or snap/flatpak. If native package manager decide to not support the package any longer it would be better to make user aware and stop maintaining app, than to install a snap package. This is a user’s decision.
Also this can have far reaching consequences. Imagine you cannot use/install snaps on your machine due some reason, what now?
I tried so hard to embrace snaps and flatpak. I really did. But the snap service kept bogging down. Installs specifically of Firefox were ponderously slow to start up. And ultimately I ended up with regular installs, PPAs, snaps, and flatpaks all together with their own daemons, update paths, and quirks sucking up my system bandwidth and emotional resources. System was constantly slow. Felt like I was running Windows.
I flipped over to endeavours, really enjoying it. Feels like Ubuntu did in the earlier years. Great support community, lots of choice, but a straightforward path to just using your system if that’s what you’re there for. And the same computer runs a good 25% faster.
Valid opinion and immutable distros like silverblue might be where the future is headed.
It’s not the point though, I’m not going with a distro that tries to force their proprietary solution on me.
Not a fan of immutable distros like Silverblue because you’re giving a lot of control to the upstream, unless you have the ability and time to maintain those system images yourself. And if you’re doing that, except for within an organization, there’s not a huge reason to not just use a traditional distro.
If you don’t want that control, they’re great.
In NixOS you can do an overlay and just make your own package. If the package works, you can submit it to the NUR. If it’s good, you can maintain it in the official channel. I’m doing both, the crappy fork of some GUI is in the NUR, the underlying service is maintained by me in nixpkgs
Nix had a huge learning curve for most folks, but it doesn’t suffer most of my complaints about control.
Ironically a full Ubuntu modular system made up of a bunch of snaps wouldn’t necessarily either. One of the cool things about snaps is that they can hold the kernel and other lower level things so you could build a “snap”-together immutable system out of various components.
Silverblue and its variants are a monolithic system image though.
Or how about… they each have their advantages and disadvantages, and therefore are each better suited to different uses and it doesn’t have to be a competition?
So your saying a Snap based Firefox use case is limited to downloading a different browser… so it’s effectively IE6? I agree, if that’s what you are saying.
PPAs suck, no doubt. But the thing is, if snap is so superior, just switch your whole distribution over to it and be done with it. Don’t do this underhanded switcheroo with individual packages spread over so many years.
The crux here is ultimately that snap just doesn’t look to be up to the task of replacing
.deb, otherwise they’d have already done it. But they still want their proprietary appstore, so they have to make snap relevant by force.I can agree with that only if they solved the problems with extensions and a few other features that were not working with the snap version. If they did not, then they are assholes.
I use keepass to fill login forms, and that does not work with the snap version.
Just curious if you know why? I thought snap was just a package format, not a siloed container.
In my case, KeePass and ExpressVPN could not function. For KeepassXC, this was the reason:
It is impossible to support native messaging when a browser is running as a sandboxed snap. This is a limitation in snapd not keepassxc.
It appears they found some work-around with an extra script after installation as of 2 years ago. Basically, snaps are sandboxed, which is a feature. That wreaks havoc with certain tools, though. ExpressVPN’s browser plugin was having similar problems, and on Linux, that’s you’re only GUI interface for ExpressVPN.
I just checked, and I was updated to the Snap version, and I had no problems with either extension, so they did solve the problems. Therefore, I’m not outraged. Ubuntu has the right to standardize their deployments on a system that makes their work easier or less chaotic - as long as it does not screw over their customers.
Edit: i was mistaken. I still use the Mozilla PPA, so the problems migjt remain.
I haven’t had any problems with using Snap. I am currently switching from Chrome to Firefox. Firefox has ran great with Snaps so far.
But I also have an Nvidia RTX 3080. The Linux community hates both Snap and Nvidia. But they are working fine for me.
I tried PopOS but they didn’t have the current drivers for my Nvidia card, so I switched back to Ubuntu. This was about a year or so ago
The NVIDIA driver in Pop!_OS is currently 535.98. I’ve been using a RTX 3080 with Pop!_OS since the pandemic lockdown.
I am at work and can’t check the driver version but they sound like the current one.
How is Steam’s new big picture mode running for you under Pop!OS? I used to run Wayland with Steam’s old big picture mode but had to go back to x because it wouldn’t work.
I’m on ARM, arm64 to be more specific. There’s no native Widevine package for the browsers. There is a way to rip it from the new chromeOS for arm64, and to then plug it into chromium and firefox… but not with snap firefox. And to top it off, flatpak doesn’t even have firefox or thunderbird for arm64.
Yes, that is the acceptable use case. Aging, I maintained software in a usable form. Not “we’re showing off our container engine so everyone has to use it now”.
Hot take: PPAs suck
Agreed. I’d rather install manually than use a third-party PPA. I’ve had way too many problems, especially when it comes time for an OS upgrade.
snaps/flatpaks are better
I see this as a false dichotomy. The point of a distro is to have a wide array of stuff tested and available in official repositories. If the official repositories only contain half-assed snap ports, what’s the point? I either suffer with a shitty Firefox or jump through more hoops than ever before to install it from external sources? Ugh.
I’m on Ubuntu again, and I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with snaps. When the time comes to upgrade again, I’m either going back upstream to Debian, or downstream to a de-snapped Ubuntu derivative.
Time to switch to Mint ( or Debian ). I have not like Ubuntu for a while but this forced match to snaps seems too much.
I use Arch myself. I have been considering trying Debian Stable with Distrobox / Arch. The stability of Debian with a totally current and massive package inventory ( thank you AUR ) sounds like perhaps the best of all worlds.
This is on an arm64 (m1) platform, in a VM.
yay! another company damaging itself!
I use the binary provided by Mozilla at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
I even wrote an installation script that takes care of it all. (For amd64, not arm64. I’m not sure if they provide a stand-alone arm build.)
TIL about desktop-file-edit.
I’ve been doing desktop files by hand for years.
My favorite thing about the Mozilla binary is that it auto updates just like Windows, as long as you have write permissions.
I tend to do the same. Can you link it ?
Their script has a really good example of using the “proper” tools to create, validate, and install the desktop file automagically. The tools themselves are likely already installed.
What’s up with the hate on snaps, again, please anyone?
- There is only a single Snap server, and it is a proprietary one exclusive to Canonical
- Upgrades are pushed in a mandatory fashion, which means things will break if a bad upgrade ever gets pushed
- Snaps have about the same integration issues that Flatpaks have due to their sandboxing, but overcoming them is even harder due to lack of tools on the Snap side of things
- Snaps are mostly Ubuntu-centric, and don’t quite work on other distros
Mostly agree, except the last two points. Snaps are available anywhere…if you so wish (I wouldn’t).
The biggest issue with snaps is that they are SLOOOOOOOW when compared to a standard binary install, or even Flatpak. Most of this has to do with fuse, but when you have many versions of a specific package, it just gets slower and slower.
The local versioning system also takes up a ton of local space by not expiring caches regularly, so it’s not fit for lightweight installs.
Thanks for the clarification! I’ve never used Snaps myself (as I’d rather use Arch than Ubuntu), so I was unaware on how slow do Snaps run on an average computer. Again, sandboxing can be an overhead too large for an old machine.
For me it’s the fact that Ubuntu forcefully shove snap into my system when I want the normal deb install with
apt. I’m sure snap has gone better over the years but this is something that I absolutely hate. When I want to use snap/flatpak, I can usesnap/flatpak install, and when I sayapt installit should be deb install as it’s supposed to be as a Debian variant. Linux tools has always been known for doing exactly what is told, whereas what Ubuntu is recently doing is the opposite of itI mean the alternative would be to just stop providing the package at all I guess? Like it seems they want to switch to snap.
I think that would be a higher integrity move for sure. The issue of course is how to migrate existing users. If they just remove the deb, many users will just stay on the old version forever. They may never know the snap version even exists.
I get the problem. I just hate their solution.
While I’m sure some people hate snap in general, most people simply hate being forced to use it. Or rather, bring forced to switch distro and reinstall everything.
Beyond the complaints about Canonical’s hostility to Flatpak and other formats, but the real risk snap poses is that Canonical has a lot of control over the snap store, and lack of integration with distros beyond Ubuntu.
There’s a vague promise of “new stores” and better integration with other distros but Flatpak is a truly open technology that gives you the option to install apps from ANY source and other distros are collaborating to improve it.
Many have issues with stability. Especially with firefox which comes installed via snap on ubuntu. Similarly compared to deb snaps versions occasionally have weird bugs. I personaaly had an issue with opening files properly using snap but worked fine on deb.
Also its unnecessarily forced. Deb works great and apt is widely used as primary package manager. No need to maintain the system with another one in the mix.
Its also repoted not to work well on otknr platforms like fedora or arch. Other package formats like AppImage, flatpak might be better in that regard though I havent used them.
For one, packages aren’t cryptographically verified after downloading them, as is done with apt.
This is a massive security vulnerability.
Verifying a snap package’s authenticity seems to suggest otherwise. What’s the source for your claim?
Your link is just guesses on a forum.
Link me to the official documentation that describes how signatures work.
You mean like https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/en/man8/snap.8.html
Still better than a random user claiming
This is a massive security vulnerability
with no justification whatsoever.
That’s usage documentation. It doesn’t describe how snap verifies packages.
The burden of proof lies with the program’s docs to prove their security. In the absence of such documentation, we should all ageree to distrust it as insecure.
Apt clearly documents how the manifest file is cryptographically signed with PGP (and if that Sig or the signed hashes dont for any package it refuses to continue).
Main reasons I see being raised a lot are Canonical’s absolute control over the snap ecosystem and the dependency problem inside the snaps, meaning they often ship outdated versions of dependencies which might have known bugs or flaws.
The fact that it is forced on users is mentioned by other people here already. Afaik this is not a thing yet on Ubuntu server, so maybe install that one + the GUI packages? Not an Ubuntu user myself, so this could be oversimplified.
Digital sanity. I do not want any of my tools to constantly beg to be updated.
Ubuntu was my first-ever training-wheels gateway to Linux. I started from 8.04 Hardy Heron, and it felt like such a counter-culture move back then and I wanted to be part of the ‘cool’ edgy goth kids that DGAF about the mainstream normies.
15 years later, I still daily-drive windows, but I have many linux boxes for various specialist use-cases, mainly for scripting or self-hosting services, and still have 22.04 server versions running here and there. But this will be my last version of Ubuntu, and the only reason its still there is because migrating them is going to be no fun.
The Ubuntu today feels like a completely different animal than when I started. My breaking point was the ‘upgrade to pro’ message on every
aptrun. I DON’T WANT TO SIGN UP FOR YET ANOTHER METERED ACCOUNT. I use Linux to escape all the mainstream commercialism and monetization once in a while when I’m up for it. Next thing I know, it starts popping up in Linux OS’s and even terminals asking me to login with an account so that I can be monetized.Don’t get me wrong, I know people need to eat and companies need revenue streams to pay their staff. Linux was my occasional escape back to my engineering and tinkering roots, but corporatism is creeping in like what happens to all good things (eventually).
Windows as daily driver?!? :(
Yes indeed, it just works when I need it to. Just 10 minutes ago I regretted installing Arch as I had some trouble trying to get my WH1000XM4 to connect. I was able to figure it out eventually as I was missing a bunch of missing packages for bluetooth and bluetooth audio that for some reason archinstall decided wasn’t part of the core packages. There was zero prompts from KDE as to why the pairing was failing and I had to figure out with some trial and error which ones were missing and which ones I needed. And after doing all that I still couldn’t get LDAC to work.
Seriously reflecting on my life choices right now, should have stuck to a distro with some sensible defaults when I just need shit to work. Of all the problems people have with M$, windows always just worked for me. Perhaps Linux and I just aren’t fated to be together. I always come back a couple of times a year to try out the state of Linux and while it has gotten a whole lot better, its always these little gotchas that result in me telling myself “maybe next year will be the year of linux”, which has been happening for the past ~15 years for me now.
I hope one day those gotchas disappear for you. You said yourself you want to get away from corporatism. Let’s hope that one day, Linux can provide that for you.
